Investors in the Environment (iiE) is a national accreditation scheme helping organisations improve their environmental actions and policies. iiE has been created to help businesses save time and money by reducing their impact on the environment and celebrate their green credentials.
The iiE network provides all the help and support needed to help make businesses greener and member achievements are celebrated through an annual award event for each region.
Members are rewarded with a certification stem once the iiE criteria for the audit has been achieved. To achieve the Green Award, businesses must commit to and achieve a 2% improvement in their efficiency over the year. Ultimately, the aim is to compose an Environmental Management System (EMS) for each business to follow and action to better improve their environmental impact.
In 2015, we joined the Investors in the Environment Scheme and we achieved the Green Award in 2016. We have worked hard as a team to implement a thorough environmental management scheme and having done so we have maintained our Green Award for 2017. Actions that we have undertaken to achieve this award level include:
- Switching our internal copier paper to Eco Label paper
- Introducing a duplex copier for internal double sided printing
- Implementing a switch-off policy on lights, equipment and the air conditioning
- Introduced an office recycling system for waste, batteries and ink and toner cartridges to reduce our general waste
- An increase in the use of public transport and car sharing to attend meetings and commuting to work
- Implementing a sustainable purchase policy meaning that we now collaborate with environmentally friendly suppliers
- Initiated internal employee well-being schemes including Fitbit challenges, run club and a counselling service
Some key stats from our audit report this year show that we have reduced our paper use by 47%, reduced our general waste by 51% and increased our recycling rate by 380%. There has also been a reduction of 35% in our carbon savings which equates to a saving of 5.26 tonnes of CO2 emissions.
This year’s awards took place in July at the Doubletree Hilton Hotel in Nottingham. The awards evening celebrates the achievements of all the regional iiE members and also included three guest speakers: Rehan Alam – Inspiring Training, Martin Rigley – Lindhurst Engineering and Jon Edger & Pete McWilliam – Castlerock Brewery. All of the speakers are members of the iiE community and shared great success stories and advice with the attendees on the evening. All in all, a very informative and aspirational event delivered by Ella Mc Manus, our iiE Business Support Officer for the region.
We look forward to working with Ella and iiE again in the upcoming year to hit our environmental targets and to start implementing new ideas in the studio too.